Opinion
Column

Here’s how Trump made Fake America Faking Great Again

Donald Trump really has made America great again.
Would I lie to you, a Fake media guy like me?
Certainly the economy is doing great. And unlike most of what Trump says or does, there are actual facts to demonstrate this.
Stock markets are at all-time highs. Even though Trump tweets this almost every day, it’s true.
Consumer confidence is at its highest level this century.
Perhaps that’s why Trump gets significantly less-dismal approval ratings on the economy than for his overall performance.
And as financial experts point out, he has made this happen largely by doing absolutely nothing but golf. That hasn’t happened since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.
“Trump inherited a moderately healthy economy and hasn’t screwed it up,” notes Bloomberg financial news service.
He has “no significant legislative accomplishments.”
What Trump has done is what he does best: talk and tweet.
I suspect he can do both at the same time, perhaps even while groping.
But what converts hot air to success is his overriding message: News is Fake.
Thanks to Trump, we no longer have to put quote marks around the words “reality TV.”
The Big Orange (pity poor beloved Expo Rusty Staub, who used to own that nickname) has made mainstream media Public Enemy Number One.
His constituents have bought into Trump’s hostility.
One wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the lynching-inspired sentiment, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required,” to a Trump rally. The darned thing ended up on the virtual shelves of walmart.com until it was pulled a few days ago.
Trump purports to like some media: Fox News, Breitbart, anything overtly racist.
But I think he wouldn’t be unhappy if Americans didn’t believe any quasi-legitimate media of any sort, if all news was considered Fake. Even the news he promulgates.
And really, what person of even marginal intelligence could swallow all of the distortions and inventions, the racism and boorishness and childishness and ignorance that Trump vomits out each day?
So Americans from all walks of life have bought into Trump’s philosophy that you can believe whatever the hell you want, no matter how non-sensical, and dismiss any inconvenient facts or arguments as Fake.
It spares anyone having to think.
Last Friday night, Republican senators voted in favour of a tax reform package, part of which allegedly was scribbled on a Chick-fil-A sandwich wrapper hours earlier. I suspect they would have passed into law the unexpurgated sex diary of Judge Roy Moore if they were told to.
That’s because in the Trump era, what’s actually in the legislation matters naught; it is whatever legislators want it to be.
Of course, some other people believe lots of horrible Fake News about America, such as that a seat in Congress or a chair in the Oval Office is the safest place for a sex offender to hide. Those same alarmists probably believe guns kill people and they’re not just on the receiving end of the Second Amendment.
Obviously those misguided millions (I’ve read they’re secretly working for ISIS) don’t want America to be great again. If they did there is lots of other Fake News they could clasp reassuringly to their intellectual bosoms.
Thankfully a sizeable portion of Americans have learned to distinguish between fake Fake and just Fake so they can select the Fake that makes American seem great again, in a Fake sort of way.
Americans always have tended to believe their country as great, sometimes with good reason. The phrase “greatest country in the world” is been bandied about with pride. “American exceptionalism” is indisputable, in many minds.
The U.S. won WWI, WWII and wars they didn’t even fight in.
The Ugly American probably was an illegal alien.
So Make America Great Again resonates. Thank Donald Trump, the greatest president in history and one heck of a golfer, for showing the fake way to fake greatness.
IN THE SPIRIT of this column, I should tell you that I’ve just been called up by the Edmonton Oilers to fill in for an injured Cam Talbot.
My new book is YUGE and has been shortlisted for a Leacock Award and the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes. But they won’t relocate the ceremonies to Aweres Township so I’m turning them down.
It’s Fake when people say I’m flying to Toronto to visit my aging mother; actually I’m on my way to the Cayman Islands to deposit some more money.
And yes, I’m decades younger and much better-looking than my Fake mugshot makes me seem.
Put that on the Internet and see who believes it.
To contact Tom Mills, or to acquire a copy of his book Sex is a Four-Letter Word and Other Misconceptions, email him at hathcharm@gmail.com or visit humourmetom.ca.